Â«Hussah! Hussah! Die Hatz geht los!Â»

Antikatholizismus bei Gottfried Keller

Gottfried Kellerâ€™s (1819â€“1890) â€ąJesuitenliedâ€ş from 1843 mocks in a coarse tone the Catholic order of the Jesuits and the papacy. The â€ąJesuitenliedâ€ş, still well known today, is not the only expression of Kellerâ€™s anti-clerical stance: His anti-catholicism has system. The sense of Kellerâ€™s anti-catholic texts is contextualized in the so-called Kulturkampf that accompanied and orchestrated in the 19th century the founding of the Swiss Bundesstaat. In Switzerland of the 19th century, anti-catholicism served the forming of identity of the republican-liberal forces and the delimitation of conservatism and restoration. Via anti-catholicism, peripheral and central positions were defined within the complex situation of the multiform Switzerland during the constitution of the state in 1848. The discursive manifestations of Gottfried Kellerâ€™s anti-catholicism can serve as an example for the political positioning of centrality and particularity in 19th century Switzerland.